Arch Install Notes

This post contains notes by me when installing Arch linux. The installation was made using the official Arch install guide. Other installation guides was used for particular installation steps and is then referenced.

E. Installation environment setup

The setup of the installation environment will not affect the installed system.

E1. Boot live environment

Boot and select Arch Linux archiso x86_64 UEFI CD.

E2. Optional: Set a bigger font if you have a high resolution display

setfont sun12x22

E3. Optional: Change keymap

In my case to a Swedish keyboard mapping

loadkeys sv-latin1

E4. Check the network connection

A working network connection is necessary to download packages for install or to login with SSH to manage the installation.

ifconfig
ping -c 3 archlinux.org

E5. Login with SSH

To install by logging into the install environment over SSH has advantages as it is simple to paste commands or run scripts. To login the root password has to be set with the passwd command and the SSH deamon has to be started with systemctl start sshd. In /etc/ssh/sshd_config root login must be aloved with PermitRootLogin yes, which is the default setting in the Arch Live. Then login with SSH from the remote computer.

#host computer
passwd
systemctl start sshd
ifconfig

#remote computer
ssh root@installip

E6. Verify the boot mode

If installing on a UEFI system, you can verify that the /sys/firmware/efi/efivars directory isn't empty.

ls /sys/firmware/efi/efivars
efivar -l

E7. Update the system clock

timedatectl set-ntp true

D. Disk setup

Now the installation starts, and now changes will start to affect the system. In the disk setup partitions will be setup and formatted with desired file systems.

D1. Inspect disks and current partions

The fidsk, gdisk and lsblk commands can be used to list information about disk and partitions.

D2. Partioning

GPT-mode partioning can be made interactively with gdisk, or with the user friendlier interface cgdisk. Non-interactively command partitioning can be made with sgdisk. Remember to set the correct partition type for e.g. boot, root, swap etc, and consider an EFI system partition. If you are to install a dual-boot system alongside windows 10 you need to consider how to deal with the boot partition. After paritioning partprobe is executed, a program that informs the operating system kernel of partition table changes, by requesting that the operating system re-read the partition table.

I am setting up two paritions. One for the EFI esp, and one with BTRFS where I later will create subvolumes.

S2. Install Arch base system

Installation is made with the pacstrap command.
base is the necessary package for installing arch.
base-devel is a package group that includes tools needed for building (compiling and linking).
For user space utilities install the btrfs-progs package, which is not part of the base group, and is required for basic operations.
It is not necessary for a basic install, and many users don't need to install it.
It can be a part of the basic install, or installed later.

pacstrap /mnt base base-devel btrfs-progs

Install might be faster selecting fast mirrors. After backing up the mirror list with cp /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.bak, close mirrors can be selected with

S13. Set root password

S14. Create user

Bootloader: systemd-boot

S15. Optional: Backup Windows boot partition

Before making further changes to the EFI paritioning it can be backed up.

S16. Install systemd-boot bootloader

Install bootloader to the boot partition.

bootctl --path=/boot install

S17. Optional: Install intel microcode

The micro code fixes or handles erratas in the CPU.

pacman -Syy intel-ucode

S18. Create bootloader entry

The bootloader will use loader entries with settings when booting.
The entries are stored in files as esp/loader/entries/*.conf.
It will tell what kernel to boot and pass settings to the kernel, as where the system root is located.

Bootloader Grub

S18. Reboot

exit # To exit back to the live system
umount -R /mnt # Unmount the installed system
reboot # Reboot the system

Error 1962

The install above went smooth with no serious error.
But on reboot the computer promts Error 1962: No operating system found. Press any key to repeat boot sequence.
The computer is a Lenovo M91p, and when googling the error it seems to be a Lenovo related problem.

Many forum threads suggest this to be a problem with the SATA cable but the same cable starts just alright when I boot with another disk with Ubuntu installed.

I also tried to reset the BIOS and to remove the motherboard battery if a remaining system setting from previous boots caused the problem.